Nowadays a great variety of mobile devices having a communication function are increasingly popularized due to their high usability and good portability. With a touch screen much more enlarged and owing to a support by hardware and software that have ability to offer various contents, such electronic devices are now showing a dramatic growth.
Most of such mobile devices have therein a camera capable of capturing an image. Namely, by using an embedded camera, a mobile device can capture an image, store or edit the capture image, and transmit the capture image to other device.
Meanwhile, for good portability, mobile devices are normally limited in their sizes. Also, this limitation in size may restrict a data processing scheme with higher performance. For example, in an embodiment where a variable compression ratio is applied to images collected by a camera, a compression ratio can be optimized for a final image buffer size such that effective operations of related components can be allowed. However, data processing performed after a full buffer is applied to an original image may require unfavorably a great burden of operation in image data processing. Therefore, this technique is not suitable for mobile devices that use rapid image processing.
On the other hand, another technique using a fixed compression ratio may reduce the quality of a final image output when there is lower image complexity. Further, when there is higher image complexity, this technique may cause waste of buffer allocation for a final image output since the size of a final image output may be unfavorably increased.